← Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship For Your Life & Business
Please Avoid This MISTAKE That I've Made Buying Six Small Businesses (Please)
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Yo, yo, what's up everybody? Missed you guys haven't been doing podcasts in a while. Actually for a month specifically today, I have not done any podcasts because what I preach on this podcast is lifestyle design. Like we want you to buy the assets, buy the businesses, buy the real estate so that you can live a life doing what you want, when you want, with who you want. And this summer I decided I don't want a freaking podcast. I wanted to go travel around Europe without having to schedule virtual interviews. I like to do my interviews in person now and that's what we've done. So this year we did a bunch of in person interviews right before I went to travel in June and now we've been posting those and I haven't picked up a podcast mic in over a month until today because I had something to say. And so before we begin today's topic, I wanna give you guys a little bit of a shout out and say that I appreciate you because super cool thing to notice, but we've had some big names like Ben Hardy, Pace Morby on the podcast and you guys listening may think, oh my God, obviously that would like 10 extra your downloads, right? That's actually false. You guys listen to me more than you listen to the big names. So when I do a solo show, more of you listen like by 20% than even if I had Alex Hormozi or frickin Mark Cuban on Crazy to Think. But hopefully that means that I'm doing something right and adding value through these episodes. So I appreciate it sincerely for each one of you that shares the show. Thank you. And now, without any further ado, let's get to the topic of today's show, which is a massive mistake that I have made in my thinking, in my execution while buying, uh, now my sixth business, we are set to close in August. So one month from now I should be closing on my six, which will bring our Top line revenue up to about 11 million I believe. So that will be almost a million a month Top line, which is crazy. And again, that's across the portfolio. Company don't just Action Academy, we're not there yet. So before I begin with our stories today, I actually want to pre frame two lessons that I want you guys to take out of this. One being the actual mistake that I have made and fixing that yourselves and fixing your mindset and preparing your mindset for this specific season of acquisition that I'm going to talk about in today's episode. And the second lesson that I want to pre frame for you guys to be paying attention to is the importance of iteration. Now, iteration isn't a word that we normally use in our vocabulary and day to day speak, but iteration is really big in the startup world. And I view Action Academy, our company, like the Mastermind Action Academy community. And as a startup company, an iteration is the process of making small incremental improvements constantly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Like changing things constantly to better serve the customer, to better support the members, and overall to add more massive value at scale. So before I bring you to the lesson today, I have to take you back a few years to my previous assumptions in the first few iterations of Action Academy. Because anyone that's new to the show may not realize that Action Academy, our community, is our primary vehicle that helps people quit their jobs. Like out of everything I do, of all the people I help, Action Academy, the community is where we can best control it and get the best results. So when we began the company in 2023 January, I was like, we are going to cut through the fluff. We're going to take massive levels of action, hence Action Academy. We're going to cut through all this mindset bullshit and we're just going to become acquisition machines. Like we are going to help people get dialed in on buying multimillion dollar assets across storage, mobile home parks, multifamily hotels, land and small businesses. And across the last two and a half years, we have gotten really good at that. We did almost $300 million of acquisition last year and this year we're aiming for 500 million plus. So we know what we're doing when it comes to acquisition. Fast forward to today. Small business is one of our largest asset classes in Action Academy. I would say probably 60% of our community members are actively buying small businesses. So out of 400 and I believe 40 or 450 members that we have now, there's a few hundred that are actively buying under contract and taking ownership of small businesses. Between the kind of one to $4 million purchase price and previously, my assumption was okay, cool, when people are coming in to do this, they'll buy the business, that will replace the income. And if you buy the business the right way, you will now leave your job and have this passive vehicle or passive ish vehicle that is already running, already self managing, already managers in place, already margin in place, if you buy it correctly, to where you can still have the life of your dreams, life by design and etc. All right, because that is what I've built for myself. For Brian Lubin like, I can go to Europe, I can go travel, I can go do this stuff. I have a team of 12 now and we have lots of systems, processes, procedures and people in place on our org chart that handle each and every function of the business. But you guys aren't here for my wins. You're here for what went wrong and what's going wrong. And here's what we've uncovered over the last two years. What which going back to iteration. This is important because now we have dozens of people per month actually doing the thing. They're closing on businesses, they're leaving corporate America. They're taking ownership of these assets. And they're all across the board. They're everything from home services companies to property management companies, you name it. And so fast forward to today, you're like, okay, cool. Have you now yielded the result that we were looking for in the first place? Which going back to initial launch was not just the acquiring of millions of dollars of assets and building wealth. People are building wealth left and right. They're building cash flow left and right, building 100 to $300,000 of profit left and right. But are they building the lifestyle that they wanted to live outside of corporate America? And the answer is no. I was like, well, what the heck is going on? Like, what is different between what I'm doing and and what they're doing? Because I'm also invested again in four of those companies. Like, I'm an investor, I'm on the cap table, I bought the company with them. So I'm in the trenches with the operators. And here's where our first lesson comes into play. Here's what went wrong, here's what we're about to fix and change in my company. And here's what I can pre frame for you so that when you're going into this situation, because there are many, many, many business buyers or wannabe business buyers that are listening to this podcast, you can blow through this stage and through this bottleneck much more smoothly than we are experiencing today. And that is the actual stabilization process of the business. So what's happening is that people are buying good businesses. The businesses that they're buying are the correct businesses. However, you are now going from a job where you are told what to do, where to be, how to do it. You didn't run the P and L, you didn't run people. You did, for the most part, didn't manage a team or lead a team. You're going from that to overnight, you are jumping into this brand new business and now, even if it's designed the right way, with teams, margin managers and payroll in place, there is still a freaking transition period where you have to deal with a whole lot of new all at once. And psychologically, emotionally, mentally, it's a lot to handle. Because this is just new. It's unknown you haven't experienced this before. And what we see to be true across all business acquisitions, this is not just an action academy thing. This is any business buying thing that you do. If you choose to do it on your own, if you choose to do it with somebody else, what's happening is that you buy the business, then you go, holy shit. Like, this is a lot more new skills, new stuff that I have never done before. If any of you have gone ice skating for the first time, it's different muscles that you have to use to stabilize your body while you're on the skates. And the first time you go, you're like, these aren't muscles that I've ever used before. And so this is what it's like to take ownership of a small business. The reason that the previous owner was passive and actually most, for the most part, not lying about it, they actually do have the passivity that are saying is because they founded the company and they've been running that company for five plus years. So of course they know how to be passive. They have the skill sets. And so what I want to do here is twofold. Both the mental pre frame of what it feels like to take ownership of a company and then also the hard skill sets to build to allow you to have that passivity. Because I had recency bias going back to where I quit my job. That first little bit, that first stretch post quitting my job, I had $20,000 a month coming in. I was freaking the fuck out, ladies and gentlemen. Like, there was so much newness going on. I didn't know how to manage my time. I didn't know sure as hell how to hire people. I didn't know how to run my P and L. I didn't know how to do any, any of this stuff. I was just like freaking the hell out. I was having panic attacks. And you know, while I was traveling around Europe, it looked sexy from the outside, but like inside I was like, dude, what am I doing? Because I didn't have anybody teaching me this stuff. I didn't have anyone kind of in my corner that was like, hey man, like here's how you do this. It's okay that you're feeling this way. Do this instead. Think about things this way instead, and you are going to be okay. I didn't have that, which is why we built it in Action Academy. And our problem up until this point is we are focused purely on acquisition. And I thought that acquisition would be the answer to freedom. And I've since learned that acquisition is 50% of the answer to freedom. 50%. So all of you guys that don't have multimillion dollar assets, even when you do buy the multimillion dollar assets, you're 50% of the way there. Because now you have to build the skill sets and the alliances and the acumen and the alignment for you to be able to run that business efficiently, smoothly, like a calm, cool cucumber, Like a true business owner, not an operator. And so right now, while I haven't been podcasting, this is what I'm working on. I'm working on a lot more content around this. Granted. Will it be on the podcast as much? I'm not entirely sure. I need you guys to DM me @BrianLubin on Instagram. Email me BrianLubinmail.com and let me know what stage you're at, because I want to make sure that the content that I'm making is directly applicable to you. Listening. That's perhaps working a job. And you're like, dude, I don't even know how to buy the business yet, let alone run the business. I'm here to tell you that if you go into Action Academy, we could teach you how to buy the actual business. But now we are building an extra 50% addition. Like, we're doubling the infrastructure, the team, the education, the materials, the processes, everything in Action Academy, our community, to now help people with that transition process. Because our members have been asking for this in the past and we just didn't have the capacity to build it. And now we have the capacity to build it out. And I'm really, really excited about it. Because now this is going to be the unlock, this is going to be the thing that gets people the true freedom. Because now you own the assets and you also own the architecture of how to build the company, how to build the systems, how to build the processes, how to build the team. Because again, I'll say this passivity comes from profits, processes and people. And until you learn how to manage your profits, your processes and your people, you will not have passivity that you seek. And I don't care if you're buying the hotels correctly, buying the multifamily the right way, buying the businesses the right way, you need all of These factors in order to pull off the full spectrum. And I get really sick of people coming online and acting like they know everything. And they are like God's gift to business buying and God's gift to multifamily and all of this stuff, it's a complete lie. Like, that's why I like coming on these shows and actually giving you guys the real, real. Like you just don't know what you don't know sometimes. And you just need to add and evolve as a business, as a human, as an investor, as an entrepreneur over time. And so Action Academy was basically acquisition Academy, to be completely honest. And that may be something that I renamed initial tier of Action Academy as we move on to having all of our people successfully buy these assets and now learn to manage these assets and scale these assets, because that's where freedom is, is through working through a team and working through processes, systems, automations, delegations and elevations. So in closing, if you're listening to this and you are in your car on the way to work or you're on your break at work and you're like, dude, this is intimidating. I want to even buy a business. Like, I don't even know how to scale this fricking thing. If you want help with all of this, like, this is literally what we do full time and this is what we're building. So by the time that you get through the programming to figure out how to buy the business, we are going to be able to help you run, manage and scale the business. This is what we're really good at. So now it's just making the hires, now it's just bringing on the coaches and now it's building out the processes and the systems for it. So it's a super exciting time for us over on the Action Academy team. I predict that we grow to 20 heads by the end of this year just on the Action Academy team and probably over $2 million of payroll for the best and the brightest talent. So I'm so excited. I love working on these problems. I like working on these puzzles. It's super fun. And so if you guys are interested in hopping on with us before we obviously raise the prices and all this stuff, like when we add all of this into our curriculum, we're going to raise the prices, duh. So if you want to do that now, actionacademy.com or of course, show description. So, guys, thank you so much and I'll do some more solo shows here soon.